Chapter 3
Shehryar
“ D o you have a problem with your hands that I’m not aware of?”
I ignored Mariyah’s irritated question and locked my teeth around an inhale as I extended my arms up towards the ceiling, shoulder pressing a dumbbell in each hand. I watched my form closely in the mirror, pretending I couldn’t see her standing behind me either.
Seven , I counted in my head and lowered my elbows level with my shoulders on an exhale.
“Like a grip as pathetic as your personality?”
Eight. And exhale.
I pushed into rep nine with a little more force than necessary as volcanic acid seeped into my blood. My left arm wobbled, but I quickly steadied it on the descent.
“Or were you throwing things around because no one was paying attention to your childish ass?”
Ten . I grunted as I dropped the weights at my feet and shot straight up to my full height. Pivoting my right foot over the bench, I finally faced the little menace yapping in my ear.
I could have pretended I didn’t feel a rush of sick satisfaction at the way her shoulders jerked up a notch and her angry eyes held still like a little predator realising it was facing one higher up in the pecking order. But what was the point? There was no one to pretend in front of.
So, I didn’t.
I embraced the coiling sensation as it slithered through my chest and moved a purposeful step closer. And fuck, I took immense pleasure as her jaw clamped and she forced herself to look up at me. Mariyah Levine was taller than the average woman, but even her five-nine didn’t hold much on my six-foot-five. She hated that I looked down on her. And what she hated, I. Fucking. Loved.
But she was a brat through and through. She couldn’t accept when she was at a disadvantage, and she used what she could in the most vicious way to even the playing field.
Her words, her eyes. And her bloody fucking body.
Lifting her mouth into a smirk, Mariyah crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip. “Are you lost for words now that Kareem’s gone and you’re no longer acting as his guard dog?”
My eyes didn’t waver from her impudent blue stare, but they didn’t need to dip down for me to know the exact shape of her hips. I could sense exactly where they dipped into her maddening waistline, where they swelled out, and where they slanted into her thick thighs.
It wasn’t knowledge I had collected willingly. In fact, I hated how her figure was imprinted into my mind. But five years was a long time to avoid looking at someone entirely. And Mariyah had a body that was impossible to forget the second it had been noticed once, let alone repeatedly.
“Mid-sized” and “pear-shaped” were the words I’d heard her and Esmeralda use on more than one shopping trip, but they wouldn’t have been my choice of words.
She was like something out of an ancient folklore that appeared pretty and sweet but was truly a pure evil murder machine. A bloody water nymph meant to drag men to their deaths.
Mariyah was smaller in the chest, had a stomach that appeared soft in fitted clothes, and men tripped over themselves to catch a glimpse of her long legs wherever she went.
Her skin wasn’t quite milky; she had a slight olive tone that she’d gotten from her dad, and her nose was splattered with the faintest freckles only noticeable from close up. Below her darker blonde arched brows were intense blue eyes framed by parted bangs.
Ringed in navy, her irises were the colour of the Lehanto Ocean when the waves rose up high and the sun shone through, creating a colour that couldn’t be described, only felt.
And fuck did Mariyah’s eyes make me feel. Irritation when they danced smugly. Raw satisfaction when they turned stormy with anger. Hatred when they were dark, narrow, and bitter. And I loathed the heat that all three brought when it sunk low and clawed at my stomach for hours after every fucking interaction with her.
For that, for the way she taunted me even when she wasn’t spouting shit, I detested her.
So, if it made me a dickhead for using my height and large build to piss her off, I didn’t care. She was the spoiled, self-centred, bratty pest I’d had to put up with for the last five years because she was Esmeralda’s best friend. I deserved at least that much gratification.
Especially after the bullshit she’d just tried to pull with King Kareem. Just remembering it made the crackling fire in my chest spit.
“I wouldn’t have had to act like a guard dog if you’d stopped circling him like a vulture,” I said, my voice low and taunting.
She scoffed and angled her chin. “Vulture?” My gaze slipped without my permission to her mouth. Her lips weren’t the fullest, but the mocking twist she wore on them drew all my attention to the peaked bow of her upper lip. Only for half a breath, but it was long enough to splatter cinders all over my skin.
“Vultures only prey on the dead, little Sheri ,” she said. I ground my teeth together to stop myself from reacting to that fucking stupid nickname she wouldn’t stop calling me. “But Kareem was neither dead nor prey. He was a rather responsive, equal participant, don’t you think?”
Fuck her. And respectfully, fuck King Kareem.
She was right. For whatever damned reason, the King of Jahandar had so easily fallen for Mariyah’s fake charm. And after I’d gotten over my initial shock, pokers had stabbed me all over and seared a temper into me I hadn’t been able to easily dampen.
It had been childish, but purposely dropping the weights and distracting Kareem had been the only way I could have saved us both from the peril of Mariyah getting her way. She would have rubbed her arse all over his lap while she squatted if he spotted for her.
That wasn’t a sight I ever wanted to witness.
I turned away to the weights I’d abandoned on the floor so she couldn’t see that I was struggling to unhinge my jaw. “Hounding him for answers isn’t the definition of equal.”
“Rather than making up crap lies, you’re better off admitting that you couldn’t stand the fact that he likes me just like everyone else does.”
The glimpse of her bratty grin in the mirror had me facing her again instead of picking the weights up. “It would help if you incorporated reality into your empty declarations.”
Venom dripped from her narrowed eyes, promising to suffocate me in the choppy waters of a sea storm. Her chin lifted, and she started prowling towards me like a huntress on the kill.
“The reality is,” she hissed out, “that you just proved to Kareem what a dickhead you are, which makes my task of winning his heart so much easier. He’ll be smitten with me before you even have the chance to drop another weight.”
She stopped right in front of me, leaning in a little too close and giving me a lungful of her sweet, peachy scent. “So, thank you for playing your part so damn well.” She grinned bright and sarcastic. “And maybe next time you want someone to pick you over me, mind your own fucking business and try not to make yourself look like the prick.”
With that, she stepped to my left, but just as her arm brushed mine, she stopped. “Oh, and Sheri? I’d avoid going anywhere near Kareem’s bedroom this evening if I was you. If you know what I mean.”
She winked and knocked my arm as she sashayed off. And I…fuck, I…
My heart pounded against my rib cage with the fists of a provoked gorilla, the vibrations of each smash reverberating through my entire being. It left me shaking, played the rumble of an earthquake in my ears, and smeared the edges of my vision in red-hot lava.
Fuck! She was such a little—
By the time I twisted to find her, she was standing on one of the treadmills under the windows, pushing a black wireless earbud into her ear, dismissing me and ending the conversation. As much as it irked me to let her think she’d won, I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of trying to continue arguing with her. Then she’d know how deeply she’d torn her way under my skin.
I didn’t have the patience, nor was I in the right headspace to finish my cool-down sets or push through any cardio. So, I returned the dumbbells to the rack, swiped my shaker bottle off the floor, and left. I tried hard not to walk like I was on a rampage up to my bedroom on the first floor.
I slammed the door shut behind me, then headed straight for my bedside cabinet and clunked the bottle down. The noise echoed in my ears for a beat. Then nothing.
I stood there, huffing and puffing, not knowing whether I wanted to rip apart the frame of my bed with my bare hands or rearrange my room again.
There was destruction inside me. The kind only Mariyah had ever been able to trigger. So many cracked paths with fumes, hotter than the inner core of Neves, spraying out each gap.
“Fucking brat,” I spat through my teeth, tugging at the long strands of my hair with both hands.
I needed to cool off. Quickly. Before I broke something.
Preferably Mariyah’s neck. Or —
I stormed away from my bed into the walk-in wardrobe in the top corner and quickly toed off my shoes and put them away. Ignoring my dishevelled appearance in the large mirror stuck on the far wall, I headed back out and into my ensuite bathroom next. I was desperate to wash the last ten minutes off my skin more than the sweat from my training session with the king.
I stripped out of my clothes, cursing at myself when I thought I ripped my T-shirt, before throwing them in the washing basket next to the corner cabinet. Shower on, I moved straight under the cold spray, not bothering to wait for the water to reach room temperature. I relished the way it fizzled out the blanket of fire wrapped around me and returned some of my composure.
The water warmed, but I turned the temperature back down. It was easier to consciously steady my breaths with the cold compressing my lungs. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Combing my wet hair back, I closed my eyes and focused. Relaxed. Breathed. In. And out. In. And—
I’d avoid going anywhere near Kareem’s bedroom this evening if I was you.
A muscle twitched in my jaw as I ground my teeth together. Just breathe. In and out.
If you know what I mean.
My lashes flew open.
Fuck! There went my fucking composure. Back was the simultaneous pulsating and ripping sensation in my middle.
Except it was slipping low. Too low. And I was near panting through my teeth. Both in ire and the aching heat that I would never put a name to as long as it was associated with Mariyah.
“Fuck,” I growled and scrubbed a rough hand over my mouth as I turned my back to the water.
Impossible . The idea of Kareem and Mariyah was fucking impossible. He couldn’t be stupid enough to fall for the ridiculous, sweet facade she tried to play. And Mariyah—she—she…
I licked across the back of my teeth.
Mariyah was a fucking liar.
There was no way her and the king would work. He was too…nice for her.
In order to satisfy a brat like her, she needed someone who could put her in her place when she misbehaved. Someone to bend her over and spank her arse until her eyes and cunt watered. She needed her filthy mouth spat in and her nipples pulled until they were sore. And then she needed to be splayed out and tied to the four corners of my bed and pounded into the mattress.
But edging wouldn’t work. A stubborn menace like Mariyah wouldn’t fall for the temptation of possibility. She’d need to be given until she couldn’t take anymore. Until she sobbed that it was too much and begged and writhed underneath me—
My breath halted on that thought.
Wait, no. Not me. Never me. Fuck no.
Mariyah was the last woman alive that I’d touch.
Though following the path of needy throbs down my stomach proved otherwise. My own body was painting me as a liar.
I glared at the swollen, aching length of my erection. Fucking traitor.
I wouldn’t rub one out and sate myself in her name, though. She would never know, but that wasn’t the point. I’d never give her that control over me. I hadn’t since she’d turned into a fucking menace, and I wasn’t planning to break that streak.
Our trip to Touma changed nothing.
Mariyah would hang out with Esmeralda and Crown Prince Kai, I’d spend my time with my mum, and the moments I had to put up with Mariyah, I’d keep my mask of composure and indifference in place.
It’d be just the same as the days I tailed Esmeralda in university.
It helped that the menace was returning to Raven two days earlier than Esmeralda and I were to return to Jahandar. Which didn’t seem like a lot. But when it came to Mariyah, it was the difference between keeping my sanity and losing it.